Normalcy returns with electric power to downtown South Bend

An underground fire late Thursday night near the intersection of Lafayette Boulevard and Washington Street caused the outage, but Indiana Michigan Power president and chief operating officer Paul Chodak said it remained unclear what sparked the fire.

"The design of this network is pretty standard...so we're very curious as to what caused the initial fire," he said. "We're really kind of puzzled as to why the (electrical) cable failed the way it did."

The fire damaged about 4,000 feet of underground copper cable. I&M planned to send the charred cable to a service center to find out what happened. Once it's clear what caused the fire, Chodak said, the company would consider safeguards to prevent a similar disruption in the future.

"We don't normally see this kind of event, so depending on what we find, we'll go where the data takes us," he said.